Connecticut Swat team members after inspecting the St Rose of Lima Catholic church in Newtown, where a bomb hoax was reported. Photograph: Lucas Jackson/Reuters

At the Shooters pistol range in New Milford, Connecticut, it was business as usual. A steady turnover of customers passed through the half-full parking lot and the "pop, pop" of guns being fired inside could be heard roughly every 10 seconds.

Just 48 hours after America's deadliest primary school shooting, the message was clear: it will take more than a grotesque gun rampage through a class of six-year-olds to detach America from its fierce affinity for firearms.

While local people offered prayers in church and Barack Obama headed into Newtown to join the community mourning for the 20 children and six teachers killed on Friday, Shooters was doing brisk business. The manager of the range would not say a word to the Guardian, but he did confirm by nodding his head that the range was open. Outwardly, it appeared as if nothing had changed.

But at least one customer signalled that America's gun lobby might be on the cusp of a moment of introspection. Mike D'Amico had come to the range on Sunday morning accompanied by his 14-year-old son. It was their regular treat, an hour of target practice. "We enjoy it, it's our personal enjoyment," he said.

When asked what he thought of President Obama's call for "meaningful action" on gun control, and the rising chorus that enough was enough, D'Amico gave a surprising answer: "I've thought this for quite a while," he said. "I think we do need more gun control. I don't see the need people to carry some of these big guns. They're not appropriate."

It is not known whether the Sandy Hook shooter, Adam Lanza, ever frequented Shooters, though the range is one of the closest to the house in which he lived in Newtown. What is known is that Lanza's mother, Nancy, whom he killed before setting off to the elementary school, was very keen on guns.

She had at least four weapons in the large rambling house she shared with her son – guns that he turned on her and then used to end the lives of 26 people at the school including the 20 six- and seven-year-old children. Nancy Lanza is understood to have taken him with her on target practice outings at shooting ranges.

Shooters has 12 stations where customers can hit targets at up to 50 feet. The range rents out to users who lack their own weapons, advertising rentals of revolvers and semi-automatic handguns and rifles from .22 to .45 calibers.

According to Connecticut police, Adam Lanza took three weapons with him into the school: Glock and Sig Sauer semi-automatic handguns and a Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle – the latter being the firearm that was used to most deadly effect.

In Sandy Hook and the nearby town of Newtown, meanwhile, the local community was engaged in a very different sort of Sunday tradition to that of the weekly visit to the shooting range: they came to worship not the gun, but God – though even that activity was rudely interrupted at one church where a bomb hoax briefly resulted in the evacuation of the congregation.

At Trinity Episcopal church in Newtown, about a mile from the center of Sandy Hook, members of the clergy handed out a box of tissues for every pew ahead of the service.

The rector, Kathleen Adams-Shepherd, told the congregation that she had been at the firehouse close to Sandy Hook elementary waiting and praying with families. She was there when some of those families found out their children would not be coming home.

What happened that day was not God's will, Adams-Shepherd told the churchgoers. Some wept as a reading listed the names of those killed. Six-year-old Benjamin Wheeler, whose parents worshipped at Trinity Episcopal, was among the dead.

Adams-Shepherd and the other members of the clergy came down among the congregation, some of them squeezing into pews next to the congregation. "I wanted to be among you," the rector said. She encouraged people to hug each other, prompting emotional embraces.

"Jesus will still come," Adams-Shepherd said. "Santa will come too," she added.

In her address to the church, she said she had made a conscious decision not to allow television crews and photographers into the church during the last few days and during Sunday's service. Families of the victims should be left in private, Adams-Shepherd said, and the church should be a place of respite.

"Thank you pastor," one churchgoer called out. The congregation broke into a standing ovation.

Whether these two institutions in one small community – the church and the pistol range – can find a common purpose in the difficult weeks and months ahead may determine the nature of Sandy Hook's, and America's, response to this tragedy.